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Programmatic

Invasion of the First-Price Auctions

With all the hubbub about first-price auctions taking over the real-time bidding ecosystem, I don’t think there’s been enough talk about why the second-price auction is currently the standard bearer. That’s why I was exhilarated when Univision’s Eyal Ebel brought the point up at our recent Meetup on the current…

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What Is MarTech?

The line about marketing tech over the last few years is that it’s becoming more closely aligned with ad tech, for both brands and publishers. There must be some truth to that idea, then, if so many people in the industry have trouble explaining what the difference is between ad…

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Chrome Gets Into the Ad Blocking Business for Real

A few months back, Google announced it would be equipping an ad blocker—or something like an ad blocker, maybe more like an ad filter—into newer versions of Chrome. The new Chrome feature would filter out ads deemed overly intrusive to the user experience. At the time, Google suggested it would…

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Understanding AI’s Potential in Digital Media

Science fiction turns fact—the term artificial intelligence seems ubiquitous at the moment, whether it’s marketing technology firms boasting about superior processing power for campaign personalization or the coming singularity and robot apocalypse.Those of us in the trenches of the digital advertising world have become immune to the lure of buzzwords,…

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When the Rosé’s Over: Thoughts on Cannes

No, I didn't go to Cannes last week. Did I want to? Honestly, yachts and rosé have never been my thing (Cheap beer in a dirty rock club? Now you're talking my language), and the gladhanding awards bit makes me roll my eyes just thinking about it. Cannes used to…

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What Are Better Ads Standards?

Better Ads Standards are an initiative for promoting “acceptable” ad experiences for users, while discouraging disruptive ads. The overall goal, as stated, has been to keep the spread of ad blocking tools at bay, by assuring the ads in the ecosystem are not so annoying they drive users to start…

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Ops 2017: The Photo Show

I came here to post photos from last week's Ops, but before that, I wanted to add one takeaway from the conference and all the conversations that led up to it. This year's Ops really hammered home something Gavin, Rob and I have been writing and talking about considerably over…

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AdMonsters Playbook: Header Bidding

There are few topics getting digital publishers chattering right now quite like header bidding. In a marketplace where many publishers long perceived buyers as having the upper hand, header bidding pits demand sources against each other, giving publishers a clearer idea of the true value of their inventory and how…

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